What kind of political advertising spin can help the flailing Republicans?

In 1984, a young Kentucky county judge named Mitch McConnell defeated incumbent U.S. senator, Walter Dee Huddleston.

One key to McConnell’s win over Huddleston by less than a percentage point was a television commercial featuring bloodhounds searching for Huddleston. The ad noted that Huddleston was “missing big votes on Social Security, the budget, defense and even agriculture.”

Now McConnell is facing serious questions about his voting record.

At age 84, McConnell has not placed a vote on any legislation since June 11,  a period of over a month and a half. It may grow with the Senate’s month-long August vacation.

Kentucky’s Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, is asking the senator to let his constituents know why their senator is not at work, an absence that began when an ambulance took him to the hospital on June 14.

Beshear is now calling for McConnell to record a political ad, a “a short video,” for Kentucky voters as evidence that he is functional and end “rampant speculation.”

This is a classic case of the old cliché – “What Goes Around, Comes Around.”

“When you’ve been in a hospital for a month and you’ve missed all the votes, which is your job – I mean, basically…you owe your boss, like anybody else out there…an explanation of what’s been going on…,” he said.

Beshear claims two Kentucky officials have told him that McConnell is either near death or dead.

McConnell is not running for reelection, but the potential ad is key to an intense competition between the Democratic governor and the Republican majority legislature over who gets to replace McConnell.

McConnell has........

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